1. Fallout from the Romney Speech Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who has indicated that he's not going to endorse any candidate in the primaries, reportedly called Mitt Romney to congratulate him on his anti-secularism speech in Texas last week, much to the jubilation of the Romney supporters at the Evangelicals for Mitt blog. Pat Robertson, despite his support for the mayor of iniquity, sent along a note as well, and to the relief of Romney's staff, it wasn't to prophesy God's wrath on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It just goes to show you that Romney's speech had its intended effect: to assure conservative evangelicals that "even though you think I believe that Satan was Jesus' brother , at least I'm not an atheist." The speech wasn't enough, though, for Gary Cass, formerly of D. James Kennedy's Reclaiming America for Christ and now of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission , an organization formed to protect Christians from "defamation, discrimination, and bigotry." (Numerous...

Yesterday's e-mail from Tony Perkins ' Family Research Council laid the blame for the weekend's tragic shootings at a Colorado mission and church at the feet of the dreaded secular media. "It's not hard to draw a line," Perkins wrote, "between the hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians and evangelicals in particular and the acts of violence that took place in Colorado yesterday." But then this morning came the news that the shooter, who was raised in a " deeply religious Christian household ," may have been motivated by revenge after being kicked out of the Youth With A Mission school several years ago. Imagine Perkins' reaction if the "secular media" suggests that it was religion, not secularism, that drove this very disturbed person's horrific violence. Such an argument is just as flimsy as Perkins placing the blame on secularism, and rest assured if anyone makes it, Perkins will pounce on it as evidence of anti-Christian...

This newsflash popped into my inbox from one Rabbi Yehuda Levin (on the Christian Newswire no less!), claiming to speak on behalf of the Orthodox Rabbinical Alliance of America: Chanukah was historically and remains a celebration of the victory over Hellenistic Jewish social liberals and the homosexual agenda. There are a lot of theories about the meaning of the holiday, but this one really takes the cake latkes. --Sarah Posner

I'd like to second Ezra's sentiments about Romney's speech. It was, at its core, as anti-Enlightenment as Rod Parsley's most recent book, Culturally Incorrect , which pointed to the Enlightenment as the root of all of our current problems. Romney posited that Americans believe that "liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government" and belittled the grand but empty cathedrals of Europe, suggesting, with as much robotic sarcasm as he could muster, that Europeans are perhaps "too enlightened" to venture inside. While Romney was asking Americans to have an enlightened response to the variety of religions in our country (or, or more specifically, asking biblical literalists to forgive his religion's deviation from their brand of literalism), he was simultaneously mocking the very basis for the constitutional republic: a government by and for the people. Not by God, and not for God, either. That said, the fact that Romney felt compelled to defend his religion tells us a lot about...

Following up on Scott's post , Mike Huckabee's ignorance about the NIE actually isn't that surprising. His shoestring campaign, to my knowledge, doesn't have any foreign policy advisers, and Huckabee is more interested in reaching out to apocalyptic end-timers like Kenneth Copeland and Tim LaHaye , for whom the only sound Middle East policy is found in the Book of Revelation, or encrypted in various parts of the Old Testament, which many end-timers believe foretell Christ's birth, death, resurrection, and return. You won't catch Huckabee talking about this stuff in mixed company, of course, and I suspect that he'll have something to say in response to the belittlement he's getting in reaction to his national security ignorance -- perhaps that Jesus was too smart to worry about intelligence agencies? In any case, for some Huckabee supporters, it probably doesn't matter. As one supporter, holding an American and an Israeli flag, told me at the Values Voters Summit in October, of all the...